Red Sox adjust infield shifts to pitchers, not vice versa

BOSTON — Dramatic shifts of infielders have become commonplace in baseball. Teams are on pace to shift more this season than ever before, according to data tracked by Baseball Info Solutions. In last week’s series between the Red Sox and Yankees, it

BOSTON — Dramatic shifts of infielders have become commonplace in baseball. Teams are on pace to shift more this season than ever before, according to data tracked by Baseball Info Solutions. In last week’s series between the Red Sox and Yankees, it seemed as though every lefthanded hitter to come to the plate saw three infielders to the right side of second base.

How have Boston pitchers adjusted to the movement of infielders behind them?

On one hand, if a hitter is being played to pull, it would seem to make little sense for a pitcher to pitch him on the outer half, inviting him to hit the ball the other way. On the other hand, if a hitter tends to have the most success when he pulls the ball, it would seem to make little sense to pitch almost exclusively on the inner half.

“I don’t want to say, ‘If we’ve got a shift on, we’re going to pitch you in, so go ahead and look for one there,’” Capuano said. “You’re kind of giving him that single the other way.”

When teams shift, they do so after careful examination of the tendencies of each hitter and his “hard-hit lanes,” as Boston manager John Farrell described it. Those tendencies have been developed over hundreds or thousands of at-bats, many of which happened with no shift in place. The idea is that the infield shift is in place to defend against what a hitter does when a pitcher pitches the way he normally would.

“As pitchers, we don’t really think about it a whole lot,” he said.

That’s what Farrell wants. Rather than pitchers adapting to the shift behind them, the Red Sox shift their infield in such a way that it fits the pitcher on the mound.

Lefty ace Jon Lester prefers to pitch to his glove side — in on righties, away from lefties. He pitches to the other side of the plate only as much as it takes not to be predictable. If Lester were to adjust to an infield overshift against a lefty, it would require him him to do something other than what he does best.

Similarly, when Jake Peavy gets two strikes on a lefthanded hitter, he likes to work off the plate away. A shift in that situation would be counterproductive.

“Everything revolves around the pitcher,” Farrell said.

As a team, Farrell said the Red Sox are shifting less than they did a year ago. Quite a bit of that is due to swapping out Ryan Dempster (who would induce more fly balls than fly balls) for Peavy (a fly-ball pitcher) in the team’s starting rotation.

“We’re going to adjust to the pitcher’s strengths — or might not adjust, based on how a given starter likes to finish guys off,” he said.